Posted on 09/29/2015 6:47:17 AM PDT by C19fan
On a night apparently in early September, at a flight test center somewhere in China, a dark-painted airplane reportedly took off on a momentous missionto fly faster than five times the speed of sound then return safely to Earth.
The airborne experiment, allegedly involving a manned aircraft with a human pilot aboard, marked a huge leap forward for China as it competes with the United States to develop warplanes and missiles capable of so-called hypersonic flightso fast that theyre almost impossible to shoot down or dodge.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
You know the chicom copy is air-breathing exactly how??
At Wright Patterson we all had to start shredding all our paperwork thanks to that POS second from left. Yes, we knew even then he was a sellout.
I think the article is BS anyway. They imply the aircraft took off from the ground. Though they have demonstrated scramjet technology this would have to be a more advanced combined cycle engine. There’s no way they could have developed that by now. That is unless we have government civilian workers giving them information on a daily basis.
I always liked the X-15 story about how Neil Armstrong bounced the plane off the atmosphere and almost had to do an emergency landing at LAX.
Altho I believe the part where he rolls the aircraft over to try to visually find a landmark through the tiny window and sees the Rose Bowl stadium and not the dry lake bed is apocyphal.
Possibly. Ground launch of rocket-drive aircraft is possible. The Me-163 for instance.
Yeager even took the X-1 (or X-1A?) up from the ground for a supersonic flight once, just to prove it could be done.
I guess it’s possible, I saw a C-130 seemingly jump into the air using jato bottles once, lol. I seriously think this is nothing more than propaganda though. U.S. research has dropped hypersonic test vehicles (rocket assist) from mother ships, I’m sure there’s a reason for that too. A manned vehicle would have to be huge. Just imagine how much fuel a scramjet eats up. Back in the day we were shooting for mach 25, blazing trails.
Paid for with money from the stupidity that some refer to as “free trade”.
I had more respect for Neil Armstrong for flying an X-15 than walking on the moon.
“Ive seen the pics of the X-15 after the high speed flight where it started to melt. Not pretty. Iirc it as determined that there needed to be a quantum jump in materials science to reach and sustain that kind of speed.”
I can assure you we are well beyond that stage. I saw photos of one mans skin design as a test panel. Basic keep it simple stupid philosophy. It was brilliant, so much so it nearly brought tears to my eyes, and it was never used to my knowledge is the sad part. American innovators, all they ask is to turn them loose.
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